Jorge Calls it Quits

There are a lot of Yankee fans out there that think that Jorge may have been the best catcher in Yankees history. Of course, I am not one of those people. A lot of people like to live in the here and now and tend to forget the better players of yesteryear. I’m not going to argue, offensively he wasn’t a bad player. Not anywhere near a Hall of Fame worthy but he was solid offensively. My problem with Jorge was the fact that he was actually a poor catcher.

He was very bad at calling games, so much so that many of the star players on the team actually had their own catchers since he really couldn’t call a game to save his life. Defensively he could never be called a superstar, but he did hold his own. I just always felt that in the field he was a liability. He had some great seasons offensively, his best two seasons though were 2003 and 2007 (both were walk years). His 2007 stats were so good, they were almost too good, 0.338/20/90. This was from a player who never hit over 0.290 in his life.

Overall I think Jorge had a great career, I hope for future catchers sake that he never becomes a catcher coach. A hitting coach I don’t have a problem with, even a manager would be a great roll for him and from what I read that’s what he wants to become. Since he is retiring as a Yankee, you know that he is going to remain with the organization. At 40 years old though, he is at the end of the line and I am glad to see him not go that extra season and tarnish his legacy. His autographed cards are going to continue to bring big dollars on the auctions. The low end cards are going for around $50 and the higher end cards are running about $125. It’s not really a sell or a buy mainly because I don’t think it’s going to move much from now on.

I really have to agree with you and I am a Yankees fan. I guess he was a top 10 catcher of his time, but that doesn’t say a whole lot. If people think Mike Piazza is an on the fence guy (which in my mind is crazy, he’s a first ballot guy) then there is no way Posada should even be considered.

I’m in agreement with Mike Webs. Posada got a lot of the credit for playing on a team that was outstanding through the years. With everything seemingly predicated on numbers when it comes to HOF analysis, Posada isn’t one of the true all-time greats. If you took his name off those stats, there would be no question. I know catchers have a premium because of the rigors of the position, and he did have a long and productive career. However, the Yankee name is strong, and championships seem to matter. I would conclude, he was good and has a lot of titles – but so were Robert Horry and Steve Kerr in the NBA…